Apple don't like paying royalties if they can avoid it, not supporting BluRay absolves them of one such requirement. They'd also need to spend development money on a new app to play the things. I'm sure they'd ditch USB if they could get away with it.

It's so rare that I need to use optical media even on the PC now that I've just got an external USB ODD sitting there which spends months on end powered off. Apple would also rather you bought all your apps from the AppStore, and used iCloud to move all your documents around. I don't think my Mac Mini has had a disk in it since the initial OS install, and I did much the same as you, bought the old model when the new driveless one was announced, I needn't have bothered other than the fact it was damn near half the price of the new model at a Noel Leemings clearance.

I recognise the need for media for offline storage purposes, but the cases where a CD/DVD is easier to deal with than an external USB stick or HDD are not common.

stevenz: Apple don't like paying royalties if they can avoid it, not supporting BluRay absolves them of one such requirement. They'd also need to spend development money on a new app to play the things. I'm sure they'd ditch USB if they could get away with it.

It's so rare that I need to use optical media even on the PC now that I've just got an external USB ODD sitting there which spends months on end powered off. Apple would also rather you bought all your apps from the AppStore, and used iCloud to move all your documents around. I don't think my Mac Mini has had a disk in it since the initial OS install, and I did much the same as you, bought the old model when the new driveless one was announced, I needn't have bothered other than the fact it was damn near half the price of the new model at a Noel Leemings clearance.

I recognise the need for media for offline storage purposes, but the cases where a CD/DVD is easier to deal with than an external USB stick or HDD are not common.

I agree and I never use DVds for data anymore. But as these devices are targeted towards the home computer market, and many people have heaps of dvds and blurays, they do want to view them on a computer screen. Otherwise you have to rip them and store them on a harddrive, which isn't strictly legal. Also that new mac may have a thinner edge to it, it looks like it has a big belly at the back of it. Kind of reminds me of the wizard of oz, where you souldn't look behind the curtain.

I drive a Toshiba Ultrabook - no optical drive. Before that I used an HP tablet PC - no optical drive. And before that an HP netbook - no optical drive. External optical drives, docking stations and the like mean that the built in DVD/blu-ray is no longer the necessity that it was once thought.

The bottom line is Apple expects you to get software from App Store, buy movies from iTunes, and store data in iCloud.

Wouldn't be so bad if most people had cable connections, but to download a full HD movie over the adsl can take sometime, as can transferring data over 'the cloud'. Any why pay extra to watch something you already own. I know that apple are basically turning the imac into an appliance like a fridge, so it is a consumption device. But that is what the ipad/apple tv is for. A desktop is a productivity device, and you may want to edit videos , burn to dvd and give them to people. Sure you can buy a dvd drive, but that is basically adding to the price of the desktop. Have apple reduced the price to compensate for the removal of a feature?

I haven't used an optical drive in a long time, except for my standalone blu-ray player at home. I saw good riddance. Give me thinner and lighter any day.

Also just wondering about what was said earlier in the thread...when did apple promise blu-ray support? I mean that genuinely.... Every reference I've ever seen of apple and blu-ray is that it's a "bag of hurt" that they want nothing to do with....

Having no optical drive makes it a PITA to get my CDs into iTunes so I can get 'em into my iPhone, or stream them to my Apple TV. I may be old fashioned, but I still prefer to purchase my music that way.

At this point I've already ripped the music I want to have a digital copy of years ago, and either thrown out or stored the originals. Any new music I buy is all digital all the time. The only time I might burn an optical disc now is on my work laptop and only to make a mix cd for the car stereo.

People said the same thing when Apple ditched the floppy with the iMac. The said the same when they ditched the optical drive from the MacBook Air. They said the same when they dropped the optical drive on the MBP Retina.